Monday, August 25, 2008

Had quite a long chat with one of my superior at work today. I tried to be more on the ball just now, hence I approached and ask him regarding some things wrong which I feel need some rectifying, his answer was - it does not matter, just accept it. Told me some lessons he learnt from the company so far. Main gist of it is that even if anyone were to leave immediately, it is not going to affect the company, the plant is still going to run, and money will still be generated. Even if you don't do any handing over, burn up all your documents, nothing will happen, not just for me, but even those as senior as him. Work is all about wayang, all about smoking and talking. He told me as our CEO is getting a huge pay increment as shown on today's straits times, here I am worrying about such a minor thing that does not even help the company earn any money.

He was right in some ways. Why should I bother to do all these if end of the day it is going to be redundant. I realised how insignificant I am compared to the hundred millions the company is earning each quarter. My existance or not in the company is not going to even nudge the finances at all. I am just less than "petty cash". And most importantly, the work I do is not at all that valuable.

Sian. What is the meaning of my life here then? I wonder if I just dissapear into thin air, how is the world going to change. I cannot even cause any influence in my small company, let alone affect the world. Probably if I dissapear, it would only mean 1 less person to squeeze for company transport in the morning to the world. Hence I decided to stop doing anything for the rest of the day. Working can make a person lose himself.

I know this post is a direct opposite of my previous post, one full of dreams and optimism. But I guess it just shows the direct contrast of my "morning life" and "night life". Totally demoralised at work in the morning, and can only wait for the night to come each day. When it comes work, I am like a dead man, but when it comes to training, I am alive. If not for this balance, I would really be non-existent a long time ago. So I ask again, what is my real profession? I guess the answer is both, I am using my day profession to "feed" my night profession. People ultimately need "bread" to survive, you can only feed on passion for so far, at least in my case.

I just want to say - I hate the person that I am in the day, I hate that person I see in the mirror every morning. I am just half of what I can be now.

Spent the past 2 weeks watching the olympics now and then when I am free, especially the gymnastics, weight lifting, swimming and track events. If I missed any big events such as the 100m and 200m finals, I would go online to watch the replay, and I would watch it over and over again. Their sheer brilliance at their sport just blew me away and inspired me. For me, I was really impressed by the China gymnastics team, Phelps and Bolt. No one will be able to feel the joy they felt when cliching the gold medal, of all the hard work they put into it years before the actual event. For them, its over 10 years of hardwork, for as little as 9.69secs on the competition, where you make it or break it. No one should understimate the power and strength of a human mind, and when he sets all out to achieve a goal. A girl below the weight of 48 lifting over 100kg, doesn't this put us alot of guys to feel so small...

I was also pleased that Singapore finally got her first silver medal after 48 years. Congrats to the table tennis team. The feeling of representing your country in the olympic games must be great. This brings me to wonder if ever cheerleading will become an olympic event, and will I be fortunate enough to be part of Team Singapore Cheerleading then, even as a backroom staff. Maybe by 2016, who knows, and I will be beyond my twenties by then. Well its just a thought, and if it really becomes an olympic event, I guess people will be betting on power houses like USA, Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand Russia to dominate it. This again makes me feel damn small...

Are we going to be just contented in being Singapore's best, or national champions? When will the day come when we, as Team Singapore, think of going to CAIO and aim to be the champions, instead of just putting up a good show? Why do we always only try to compete amongst ourselves, and not try to compete with the rest of the world? We need to set our sights further, only this way we can improve faster. Is this dream too big for most of you? Dare not even think about it? Well without dreams, there can be no success. This is a dream, only if we can all believe in it together, and not just 1 person.

I have to train much harder! Even with the "tough trainings" I had been through the past 4 years, I think it is no where near, not even half of what the champion olympians such as Phelps and Bolt had put in. If cheearleading is a sport, do you really think that you can be good in it without making sacrifices and hardwork? If you are not good at it, you better be putting in even more hardwork and committment than others. If you are playing catching up, if others train 3 hours a day, 3 times a week, you better be training 4 hours a day, 4 days a week. This is the kind of committment and effort I am talking about, no pain no gain. And this is what I want to be, I want to catch up with the elites of Taiwan, and even USA. Dare to dream, believe in, and succeed.

P.S: X-Wonder hope we can play our part, however little, to bring up the name of Singapore cheerleading internationally. We will strive to become the inspiration, to dream big, which is so lacking in recent times.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Thursday, August 21, 2008

I hired a personal trainer to train me 2 times a week. Yesterday was the first training and I felt totally exhausted. The trainer sure knows how to push me. I hope that I can endure through all the tough trainings coming up. I really want to become as mentally determined as my trainer. Its all in the mind.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

X-Wonder was established on 05 August 2006. It was an idea by Snow and myself, with the purpose of training to be great in partner stunts and also to promote it to others. The name X-Wonder was derived from the initials of both of our names, XingWei and XueWei, both are XW.

When we started, the hardest stunt that we could do is the single liberty. We only just started doing it after exams, around the month of June. By August, when we formed, our single liberty was still quite unstable and I will give it a hit rate of only around 60%. X-Wonder set 1 was our first video, done during that time when the freshies are in for workshop cum tryouts. It can be seen from the video that the single liberty was wobbly.

It was not easy to learn stunts then, as compared to now, where alot can do a single liberty within few trainings with the proper guidance. Back then, we are almost the pioneers in doing single bases stunts beyond single extension unassisted. We have to go through all the long and winding road to experiment ourselves, to try and error what is the right way. Those starting cheer now can be very thankful that they have all the resources and knowledge to be pass on to them, and they can start by doing the right way from the beginning.

It took us another almost half a year of hard training and trying to say that we can do single liberty with a 90% hit rate. It is around January 2007 by then, when we are preparing for cheerobics. It is also during this period, when our liberty was better, that we start to experiment with alot of different transitions and ways to go to hands. As can be seen in X-Skills intermediate, stunts such as rocket to hands, jumpless to hands, sitting toss to hands, etc. During this period, we played around with many new stuff and draw inspiration from youtube.

After being able to do the liberty with relative ease, we started trying to do the cupie, toss extension, and toss liberty. It took us another few months to be able to do a "slow" cupie, and we aim to be able to achieve a certain hit rate by cheerobics 2007. Training partner stunts amidst cheerobics was a very tall order, just running through the routine leaves you drained of all energy to try anything much.

After Cheerobics 2007 was the first CAIO almost immediately. And it took us till after CAIO to be able to say we can do a "fast" cupie with a higher consistency. After seeing the standard increasing in Cheerobics 2007, and after going to Japan, We foresee that the way to move forward was to learn the full-up. From May onwards, after exams, we trained very hard on doing the full-up hands. We slowly work towards tossing higher and spinning faster. Once again we were the first in Singapore to try it, and we received no help or guidance in it. We can only keep trying and trying, till we finally had a breakthough. Having gymnastics lessons also helped us alot in this aspect. Once we had the breakthrough, it helped the team too, full-up 221 and full-up gladiator soon followed. I knew full-up stunts is the key for cheerobics 2008, to set us apart from others. (Toss-up stunts are getting very common.)

It was then 1 year into the formation of X-Wonder, from struggling to do the single liberty to being able to do full-up hands and cupie. Training to do the full-up requires alot of blasting, and soon toss cupie followed. Things start to naturally come together, step by step. In September 2007, after the Taiwanese cheerleaders came to Singapore, they corrected us alot again. Finally for the first time, there was some guidance and experience for us. It seems that although we could do some of the stunts such as full-ups and toss cupie, our fundamentals were wrong, and to progress further would be impossible. We had to relearn everything over again, focusing on the right techniques. It took us quite some time to adjust to the new concept, and to force our body to accept the new inputs.

Again it was back to the drawing boards, and it took us a great deal of time and effort to re-adjust our style of doing liberties, cupies and tossing. No breakthrough was made, just strengthening our basics for half a year. Handstands are very vital, and I started to practice alot on my handstands, which I had also documented in my previous posts. We also started to practice left cupie during this time, as we learned from the Taiwanese too that having a balanced left and right side is also of utmost importance to progress. It remained like this till after Cheerobics 2008, where we got more time to practice our partner stunts again.

After having a good rest, we began our quest again, with the proper basics, concept and techniques in placed, built over the last half a year, we began getting back what we lost and doing it better. Right cupie now is almost 90% hit rate, toss cupie also felt much better. Stuff such as full around, liberty tick tocks, pop over start to become nearer. As of now, we are still working on the hit rate of these. We hope that in another half a year's time, all these shall become our basics.

Looking back again in summary of the 2 years, we started off with wobbly single liberties, to now doing tick tocks and pop overs. We tried and tested, learned and re-learned the basics over and over in the last 2 years. 2 years is not a short time, but it is also not long either. To those that just started, never be discouraged by seeing others doing amazing stuff, everyone has to go through the learning process. At least your learning curve will be much shorter with all the experience of your predecessors and their guidance. In 2 years time or much less, we will be able to see many more tick tocks and pop overs, leading to a start of a new era and generation of cheerleaders for Singapore cheerleading.

A video footages of what we had been through in the past 2 years. We all fall, only to get up and become stronger.

P.S: This post is especially dedicated to people such as Graham, aka Hamzai, Ka Hau, my best supporter of X-Skills, Ken, aka baybay and Lijing, my hardworking "diciple". This is for showing your passion and determination, overcoming all odds and going to great lengths to realise your dreams. You guys will definitely be able to do very well. You guys deserved our respect. Jiayou!